PolyFormer: Referring Image Segmentation as Sequential Polygon Generation

In this work, instead of directly predicting the pixel-level segmentation masks, the problem of referring image segmentation is formulated as sequential polygon generation, and the predicted polygons can be later converted into segmentation masks. This is enabled by a new sequence-to-sequence framework, Polygon Transformer (PolyFormer), which takes a sequence of image patches and text query tokens as input, and outputs a sequence of polygon vertices autoregressively. For more accurate geometric localization, we propose a regression-based decoder, which predicts the precise floating-point coordinates directly, without any coordinate quantization error. In the experiments, PolyFormer outperforms the prior art by a clear margin, e.g., 5.40% and 4.52% absolute improvements on the challenging RefCOCO+ and RefCOCOg datasets. It also shows strong generalization ability when evaluated on the referring video segmentation task without fine-tuning, e.g., achieving competitive 61.5% J&F on the Ref-DAVIS17 dataset

<b>Shear behaviors of confined flow: Insights for understanding the influences of fractal particle size distribution </b><b>in highly localized zones of granular flows</b>

The data are originated from the DEM performed on confined shear flow. </p

Cask Principle of Multi-Attribute Risk Assessment: Non-Weighted Maximal Approach for Production Accidents

This paper proposes a non-weighted maximal approach of multi-attribute risk assessment for production accidents, which comes from the Chinese practice of risk management rather than the theoretical weighted multi-attribute approach. The existing literature for risk assessment of pipeline accidents, there is an absence of or lack of explicit consideration of some special dimensions, i.e., environmental pollution as the important derivative disaster. The non-weighted maximal approach is described the maximum function among multiple criteria, which include fatalities, serious injuries, direct economic loss, and environment pollutions. The approach comes from the Chinese government official achievement assessment system with the characteristics of &#x201C;one ticket veto system for production safety&#x201D;, and has applied to ex ante assessing likelihood of the accident, and ex post holding the responsible for accidents. At last, applying the case of the Chinese Qingdao oil pipeline accident, the maximal approach is compared with the FN curve criterion, the ALARP principle and the ELECTRE TRI method. The results show that the maximal approach of production safety accident criterion pays more attention to the risk density or risk consequences, which follows the &#x201C;cask principle&#x201D; and is much more useful controlling the risk when targeting the vulnerable links of engineering systems

Roles of Mitochondrial DNA Damage in Kidney Diseases: A New Biomarker

The kidney is a mitochondria-rich organ, and kidney diseases are recognized as mitochondria-related pathologies. Intact mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) maintains normal mitochondrial function. Mitochondrial dysfunction caused by mtDNA damage, including impaired mtDNA replication, mtDNA mutation, mtDNA leakage, and mtDNA methylation, is involved in the progression of kidney diseases. Herein, we review the roles of mtDNA damage in different setting of kidney diseases, including acute kidney injury (AKI) and chronic kidney disease (CKD). In a variety of kidney diseases, mtDNA damage is closely associated with loss of kidney function. The level of mtDNA in peripheral serum and urine also reflects the status of kidney injury. Alleviating mtDNA damage can promote the recovery of mitochondrial function by exogenous drug treatment and thus reduce kidney injury. In short, we conclude that mtDNA damage may serve as a novel biomarker for assessing kidney injury in different causes of renal dysfunction, which provides a new theoretical basis for mtDNA-targeted intervention as a therapeutic option for kidney diseases

Studying spatial agreement of catchment response to climate and landuse change under uncertainty for prioritizing investment into hydropower catchments

Joint climate and land cover change can significantly alter catchment hydrologic response, e.g., in terms of runoff and sediment delivery, and thus key determinants for downstream hydropower outcomes. While many studies highlight climate risk for hydropower operation, it is less clear how climate and landuse change together will impact hydropower outcomes, if managing landuse can reduce those impacts, and how to prioritize effective investments in the face of uncertainty about the future climatic drivers. In this study, we use Chaglla Dam, Peru’s third largest electricity generator, to develop an ensemble approach to identify parts of Chaglla’s contributing area with consistent changes in runoff and sediment under climate change. Those areas could then be targeted for maintaining or restoring natural land cover to increase baseflow and decrease sediment. We use SWAT to model catchment response for a large ensemble of climate trajectories based on latest CMIP 6 data, downscaled using multiple state-of-the-art algorithms and high-resolution regional weather observations (Figure 1 A and B). Based on the results, we identify parts of the catchment with greatest changes in water yield. We find that 35 % of the watershed area shows consistent trends in water yield and sediment across all climate scenarios

Microarray Technology for Major Chemical Contaminants Analysis in Food: Current Status and Prospects

sensor

Rapid on-site sensing aflatoxin B1 in food and feed via a chromatographic time-resolved fluoroimmunoassay.

Aflatoxin B1 poses grave threats to food and feed safety due to its strong carcinogenesis and toxicity, thus requiring ultrasensitive rapid on-site determination. Herein, a portable immunosensor based on chromatographic time-resolved fluoroimmunoassay was developed for sensitive and on-site determination of aflatoxin B1 in food and feed samples. Chromatographic time-resolved fluoroimmunoassay offered a magnified positive signal and low signal-to-noise ratio in time-resolved mode due to the absence of noise interference caused by excitation light sources. Compared with the immunosensing performance in previous studies, this platform demonstrated a wider dynamic range of 0.2-60 μg/kg, lower limit of detection from 0.06 to 0.12 µg/kg, and considerable recovery from 80.5% to 116.7% for different food and feed sample matrices. It was found to be little cross-reactivity with other aflatoxins (B2, G1, G2, and M1). In the case of determination of aflatoxin B1 in peanuts, corn, soy sauce, vegetable oil, and mouse feed, excellent agreement was found when compared with aflatoxin B1 determination via the conversational high-performance liquid chromatography method. The chromatographic time-resolved fluoroimmunoassay affords a powerful alternative for rapid on-site determination of aflatoxin B1 and holds a promise for food safety in consideration of practical food safety and environmental monitoring

Saturation Effect on the Coherency Loss of Spatially Varying Vertical Ground Motions

The effect of the influence regularity of site saturation and water level on the coherency loss between spatially varying earthquake ground motions (SVEGMs) in a vertical direction is not yet clear. Therefore, taking an onshore-offshore site as an example, the influence regularity of site saturation and water level on the coherency loss of SVEGMs in a vertical direction was studied, in which the saturation degree of the whole site (SD), the groundwater level (GWL), and the thickness of the surface water layer (WLT) were considered. Under each case mentioned above, a large number of vertical in-plane SVEGMs were synthesized and then correspondingly, the mean lagged coherency loss and phase angle of coherence function were obtained, and a series of comparisons were carried out to shed light on the varying trend of the value of lagged coherency loss and phase angle, with predefined parameters. The results showed that SD, GWL, and WLT possess significant effects on the varying trend of the coherence function of vertical SVEGMs

Risk Assessment on Dietary Exposure to Aflatoxin B1 in Post-Harvest Peanuts in the Yangtze River Ecological Region

Based on the 2983 peanut samples from 122 counties in six provinces of China’s Yangtze River ecological region collected between 2009–2014, along with the dietary consumption data in Chinese resident nutrition and health survey reports from 2002 and 2004, dietary aflatoxin exposure and percentiles in the corresponding statistics were calculated by non-parametric probability assessment, Monte Carlo simulation and bootstrap sampling methods. Average climatic conditions in the Yangtze River ecological region were calculated based on the data from 118 weather stations via the Thiessen polygon method. The survey results found that the aflatoxin contamination of peanuts was significantly high in 2013. The determination coefficient (R2) of multiple regression reflected by the aflatoxin B1 content with average precipitation and mean temperature in different periods showed that climatic conditions one month before harvest had the strongest impact on aflatoxin B1 contamination, and that Hunan and Jiangxi provinces were greatly influenced. The simulated mean aflatoxin B1 intake from peanuts at the mean peanut consumption level was 0.777–0.790 and 0.343–0.349 ng/(kg·d) for children aged 2–6 and standard adults respectively. Moreover, the evaluated cancer risks were 0.024 and 0.011/(100,000 persons·year) respectively, generally less than China’s current liver cancer incidence of 24.6 cases/(100,000 persons·year). In general, the dietary risk caused by peanut production and harvest was low. Further studies would focus on the impacts of peanut circulation and storage on aflatoxin B1 contamination risk assessment in order to protect peanut consumers’ safety and boost international trade